Bean
Julian Delphiki, more commonly known as Bean, was one of the genius children that attended Battle School and helped to defeat the Buggers. Biography Pre Battle School Bean was born in Rotterdam as the result of an illegal experiment in genetic engineering conducted by a scientist named Volescu. Volescu stole 23 frozen fertilized eggs from his half-brother Julian Sr. and activated "Anton's Key" in each of them. (Anton's key was a genetic switch which removed all limits on the growth of the subject's mind and body.) When Bean was only about a year old, Volescu evidently learned that discovery of his illegal experiment was imminent, and "discarded" all of the babies except Bean, who escaped his purge by crawling into a toilet tank and hiding there for several days. Later, the janitor janitor discovered him there and took him home. After a short time living with the janitor, Bean perceived that he was not welcome there and wandered out to live on the streets of Rotterdam. Later, when he was approximately four years old, Bean joined Poke's street crew. Poke was very merciful to Bean, and probably saved his life by feeding him. There, Bean devised a plan to get more food for the crew by recruiting a bully to get them into the soup kitchen. To his consternation, Poke targeted Achilles de Flandres, who was one of the lowest individuals in the bully hierarchy due to his bad foot. Considering Achilles was a poor choice, he advised Poke to kill Achilles, but she chose instead to show him the same mercy she'd showed Bean, sparing his life. After that, Achilles appointed himself the crew's "papa" and successfully carried out their plan, winning them a steady supply of food and himself a higher social status among the older street children. Later, when Achilles began contemplating killing Bean in revenge for his humiliation at his hands, Poke intervened, and met with Achilles late one night to plead with him for Bean's life. Bean witnessed this meeting, and though he was not present for its fatal conclusion, found Poke floating in the river shortly thereafter. This caused Bean incredible guilt, and became a defining incident in his life that would return to haunt him repeatedly throughout the events depicted in Ender's Shadow and its sequels. Battle School Meanwhile, Bean and Achilles are noticed by Sister Carlotta, a nun who recruits children for the International Fleet's (IF) Battle School. Sister Carlotta discovers that Bean was actually the mastermind behind the plan to create civilization among the street urchins, and also that Bean and Achilles cannot both be sent to Battle School lest one kill the other. She gets Bean into Battle School and hides Achilles in a school on Earth in hopes that the IF will not find him and decide to send him to Battle School. Although Bean's test scores and intelligence far exceed those of any other Battle School student—including Ender Wiggin's—Bean is both the smallest and youngest child in the school. He keeps to himself, but shows an intense interest in Ender, the school's most successful and well-known student, because everyone is soon comparing Bean to Ender. He does his best to hide his obsession with Wiggin, however. The first friend Bean makes in the school is another boy in his launch group, Nikolai Delphiki. The first person Bean meets outside of his own launch group is Petra Arkanian, a friend of Ender Wiggin. During his stay at Battle School, Bean explores the school and eavesdrops on teachers by crawling through the ventilation. After a few months, Colonel Graff recruits Bean to create an army from scratch for Ender. Ender is rather mean to Bean at first, but a partnership emerges between the two geniuses. While Bean has greater intelligence (Ender is the only student to approach Bean's intellectual level), Ender has the ability to lead and to inspire personal loyalty among his fellow students. After the initial small fights, Ender uses Bean's intellect by assigning him an "ad hoc" toon to come up with crazy stunts, flashy strategies that might come in handy in the Battle Room as the teachers keep changing the rules to be biased against Ender's army. After Ender kills Bonzo Madrid, Ender effectively quits the game and relies on Bean to plan and execute his final Battle School battle, which is against two armies at once. They win by having Bean's toon go through the enemy's door early in the battle. After the battle, the teachers made a rule that all enemy soldiers must be frozen or disabled before an army can go for their gate. Later that day Ender (along with many of the other commanders) is graduated, and Dragon Army is dissolved. Bean is put in command of Rabbit Army. There was a brand new student put in Rabbit Army, Achilles. Bean knew that Achilles would eventually try to kill him, so Bean came up with a plan to get him sent back to Earth. He told Achilles that the reason Ender was so good was that he spied on the teachers and other armies with him and knew all of their plans. With the help of a small group of other soldiers, Bean had Achilles trapped in the air intake system, hanging by some deadline. They recorded his confession of the series of murders he committed. He was immediately sent back to Earth, and eventually to a mental hospital. After a very short amount of time, Bean had his first battle. He never won any of his five battles. He was more interested in training his soldiers, and learning from the other commanders, than winning. Command School Bean is picked for Ender's Jeesh and sent to Tactical School to train for the Third Invasion. In Tactical School, Bean and the rest of the Jeesh study the ships that were being used for the invasion. They were older models, since the ships that would be used were launched soon after the Second Invasion. They were soon sent to Command School, to train with simulators of the final battles. During this time, Bean was used as the commander. The other children resented him at first for it, but later found great respect. When Bean's simulators breaks down, the technician tells Bean that they did not bother programming in a time lag. Bean then realizes that the lack of a light speed lag in the simulations is intentional, meaning that the IF has the technology to send communications faster than the speed of light. He realizes that at any time, the games that they are playing can become real battles in the Third Invasion without their knowledge. Bean plays the pivotal role of watching the flow of the battle and essentially being a second pair of eyes and ears for Ender. As the battles wear on and Ender tires, Bean begins to take a bigger role, translating unclear instructions. Bean was given the opportunity to take control of Ender's position as commander at any time. Some of the Jeesh, such as Crazy Tom, also run their battle plans through Bean. In the very final battle, neither Ender nor Bean can see any way to win; Bean remarks, "The enemy's gate is down," an instruction Ender had given to his army back in Battle School. This sparks an idea in Ender's mind, and he gives orders for a suicide run in order to destroy the Bugger homeworld itself with their ultimate weapon, nicknamed "Dr. Device" or "Little Doctor". More and more of the ships are shot down, and because of the atmosphere, they are breaking apart. Bean tells his last ship to set off the little doctor inside his ship. The planet was destroyed. Once the Jeesh wipes out the Buggers, the children, except for Ender, return to Earth. Bean is introduced to his biological parents, whom Sister Carlotta had found, and learns that Colonel Graff had been telling the truth after all when he'd said that Nikolai was Bean's brother and Bean's real name was Julian Delphiki. Back on Earth After the final battle, Graff revealed to Bean that he had a brother: Nikolai Delphiki, his friend from Battle School! Graff informed Bean that he and Nikolai would return to Earth to live with their parents, and his real name, chosen by his parents, was Julian Delphiki. One year after returning to Earth, Ender’s squadron leaders were all kidnapped - all except for Bean. Bean and his family were on vacation, and after seeing the news, immediately went into hiding under the protection of the Greek government. Soon, however, it became apparent that they were not safe as long as even one person knew where they were. Furthermore, Bean suspected that mastermind behind the kidnappings was Achilles, who had escaped from the mental institution where he had been incarcerated. So Colonel Graff separated Bean and the rest of the Delphikis and sent him away with Sister Carlotta to hide wherever they saw fit. After traveling for several months, Bean decoded a hidden message from Petra. The message included the approximate location of Ender’s Jeesh, which along with the name and history of their captor, Achilles, Bean gave to Peter Wiggin. Peter wrote a letter as Locke which was published immediately. The next day, thanks to Peter’s letter, all of the captives were rescued - except Petra. Bean and Carlotta flew to Greensboro and met with Peter, where Bean convinced Peter to preemptively reveal himself as Locke so that Achilles could not. Although skeptical, and not very fond of Bean, Peter informed Bean that Achilles - with Petra - had left Russia where he had been heading operations. Sources, Peter continued, said that the two of them had gone to India. Trying to be somewhat closer to the action, Bean and Sister Carlotta moved to Thailand. After several weeks in Thailand, where Bean was promised some resources, he was still not given access to any military material or even intelligence. Deciding that there was too much danger, and no benefit to her presence, Bean sent Sister Carlotta away. He then sent a memo with several military suggestions and plans to the head of the military, Chakri Naresuan. Suriyawong, another Battle School student who was the chief military adviser of Thailand, intercepted the memo, however, and did not forward it. Instead, Bean was called to Suriyawong’s office and, after some discussion, was given a small force and limited intelligence. It was a start, and over the next few months, Bean trained his small force almost to perfection. He was using training methods he had learned from Ender in Dragon Army, as well as many techniques he had developed as the Commander of Rabbit Army. It was long, however, before an attempt was made on the lives of both Bean and Suriyawong, which they narrowly escaped thanks to a nagging intuition which Bean had honed while on the run with Sister Carlotta. The same evening that Achilles’ army began its invasion of southeast Asia, Suriyawong’s barracks was bombed by a saboteur working for Chakri Naresuan, who was cooperating with Achilles. Bean called for Sister Carlotta to come to Thailand, as a sign of confidence, before he and Surrey would reveal their positions. When Achilles’ attack on Bean and Surrey failed to produce corpses, Achilles initiated another plan, which destroyed an airplane en route to Thailand. Although the disaster appeared to be unrelated to the attack on Bean, Bean suspected otherwise… Sister Carlotta had been on that flight, and Bean thought that Achilles might have deliberately destroyed her. A computer message, which she had scheduled to be delivered to Bean upon her death, told Bean of his particular genetic condition, including his extraordinary intelligence, and his short life expectancy. One of Peter’s informants, who just happened to work for an American satellite operation, shed even more light on the circumstances of Carlotta’s death: the attack on the plane was not a sudden coincidence, but rather the first step of a well-planned, Chinese initiated conquest. Apparently, Achilles was directing Chinese operations from the very nation he was trying to conquer! Forced together by dramatic circumstances and a common Battle School history, Suriyawong and Bean were now friends, and became full partners in a war of sabotage against Indian supply lines and army warehouses. After mysteriously finding and picking up Virlomi, one of the Battle School students who had been under Achilles’ control in India, Bean and Surrey were finally able to take the war to Achilles’ roof top! There, Bean ended a nearly disastrous stand-off with Chinese forces by allowing Achilles to leave unharmed, while Petra and the other grads were released. Strategos Bean, with his small army of elite soldiers and Battle School grads, went into hiding for almost a year as China’s conquest engulfed Southeast Asia to the border of Pakistan, including Suriyawong’s home in Vietnam. Finally, however, Peter Wiggin became the new Hegemon and appointed Bean as Strategos over the Muslim League military. Unfortunately, by this time, the only military force available to the League consisted of the small contingent of soldiers Bean had brought with him! Nevertheless, Bean moved to the new League high command in Ribier o Preto and took on the title of Strategos. Notes * Bean describes himself in Shadow Puppets to be part African and part Greek. This gives several hints about his appearance, but certainly is limited. * In all, Bean had 9 children with Petra. Their names were Andrew, Andrew (Ender), Petra (Poke), Petra, Ramon, Bella (Carlotta), Bella, and Randall Firth (Achilles de Flanders II). Petra herself only gave birth to one, Andrew (AKA Ender). The rest were stolen by Achilles and implanted into 8 other women. By the end of Shadow of the Giant, 8 of them had been recovered and the other was going with Randi to a colony. Though unconfirmed, this child appears to have Anton's Key turned on. Trivia * Known E-mail addresses: ** Bean@Whereeverthehelliam Quotes * "I'm not human. My race dies with me." * "You're the best, Ender" Ender's Game * "I was wiping my little Ender's butt, and I thought, there's an awful lot of shit here." Notes * Bean is, genetically speaking, Volescu's half-nephew. * 5 kids including Bean from Bean's launch group went to the Dragon Army, Bean, Nikolai, and three others. Related Articles * Anton's Key External Links References * Ender's Game * Ender's Shadow * Shadow the Hegemon * Shadow Puppets * Shadow of the Giant ---- Category:EnderVerse Category:Characters Category:EnderVerse Characters Category:Dragon Army Category:Rabbit Army Category:Ender's Jeesh Category:Poke’s crew Category:Battle School Students Category:Articles with minor spoilers Category:Battle School Army Commanders